Historians From The United States

"‘It is a truth universally admitted that we all speak badly of others, even of those of whom we may in fact be quite fond.’ You have to warm to a historian who is prepared to embed such a sentiment in the midst of a learned treatise about the ."

"There are engagingly troublesome undercurrents to much of Stansky’s writing. Again and again he portrays formidably endowed characters struggling to encapsulate and communicate what they believed to be the feelings of those less privileged than themselves."

"One of the important problems in the southward movement of the Indo-Iranians or even of early Iranians is the existence of two almost mutually distinct cultures, the Andronovo culture of the steppes of Kazakhstan and the Bactrian Margiana complex."

"Henning further proposes that the relatively swift and easy conquest of eastern Iran by Cyrus the Great presupposes the coexistence of a large ataic or group of stats. Otherwise the conquest would have taken a much longer time. If we follow this line of argument however, one might add that the absence of later revolts against the Achacmemds except in Darius' first year when rebels were everywhere would suggest a background of Median hegemony or some western rule in eastern Iran. In the same views it is easy to believe that Cyrus put an end to the Kiiwarezmian state ruled by Vishtaspaf the patron of Zoroaster, because there are too many imponderables and no real evidence. At the present we can only say that there probably were at least two states or rather confederations in eastern Iran before the Achaemenids with centers in Bactria and Herat. Further, the Median empire probably had relations with one or both and possibly exercised some sort of influence over one or both although there is no proof. Kavi Vishtaapa and Zoroaster fitted into the Herat confederation then before it became unified, if it ever really did, and they did not necessarily have anything to do with Cynia. The possibility that Bacttia reached prominence only under the Achaememds, and after the fail of a Khwiireimian state as suggested by Markwart, is an attractive theory' but again without evidence. So our history of eastern Iran before the Achacmcnids h scanty and conjectural* The sagas of the epic for this period are unreliable as history but they provide a framework for the heroic age which did not require history."

"Congress had rich gifts to bestow — in lands, tariffs, subsidies, favors of all sorts; and when influential citizens made their wishes known to the reigning statesmen, the sympathetic politicians were quick to turn the government into the fairy godmother the voters wanted it to be. A huge barbecue was spread to which all presumably were invited. Not quite all, to be sure; inconspicuous persons, those who were at home on the farm or at work in the mills and offices, were overlooked; a good many indeed out of the total number of the American people. But all the important persons, leading bankers and promoters and business men, received invitations. There wasn't room for everybody and these were presumed to represent the whole. It was a splendid feast. If the waiters saw to it that the choicest portions were served to favored guests, they were not unmindful of their numerous homespun constituency and they loudly proclaimed the fine democratic principle that what belongs to the people should be enjoyed by the people."

"There was a vast amount of nosing about to discover bad smells, and to sensitive noses the bad smells seemed to be everywhere. Evidently some hidden cesspool was fouling American life, and as the inquisitive plumbers tested the household drains they came upon the source of infection — not one cesspool but many, under every city hall and beneath every state capitol — dug secretly by politicians in the pay of respectable business men. It was these cesspools that were poisoning the national household, and there would be no health in America till they were filled in and no others dug. It was a dramatic discovery and when the corruption of American politics was laid on the threshold of business — like a bastard on the doorsteps of the father — a tremendous disturbance resulted."

"Perhaps the rarest bit of irony in American history is the later custodianship of democracy by the middle class, who while perfecting their tariffs and subsidies, legislating from the bench, exploiting the state and outlawing all political theories but their own, denounce all class consciousness as unpatriotic and all agrarian or proletarian programs as undemocratic. But it was no fault of Andrew Jackson if the final outcome of the great movement of Jacksonian democracy was so untoward; it was rather the fault of the times that were not ripe for democracy. ... One far-reaching result survived the movement, the popularization of the name of democracy and the naive acceptance of the belief that the genius of America was democratic."

"Your flaming torch aloft we bear, With burning heart an oath we swear To keep the faith, to fight it through, To crush the foe or sleep with you In Flanders' fields."

"Ideas are not godlings that spring perfect-winged from the head of Jove; they are not flowers that bloom in a walled garden; they are weapons hammered out on the anvil of human needs. Freedom to think is bought with a price; and to ignore the price is to lose all sense of values. To love ideas is excellent, but to understand how ideas themselves are conditioned by social forces, is better still. To desire culture, to enjoy commerce with the best that has been known and thought in the world is excellent also; but to understand the dynamics which lies back of all culture signifies more. Men who will be free, struggle to be free, fashion themselves ideas for swords to fight with. To consider the sword apart from the struggle is to turn dilettante and a frequenter of museums."

"Those older satirists—nagging souls like Pope and bold bad fellows like —were mainly concerned to annoy their victims with pin-pricks. They were too completely the gentleman to grow chummy with base fellows whom they frankly despised; and in consequence they never discovered half the possibilities of the gentle art of satire. Sinclair Lewis is wiser than they were. He has learned that before one can effectively impale one's victim, one must know his weaknesses and take him off his guard."

"There is a certain historical fitness in the fact that the should have arisen in Connecticut and been the intellectual and spiritual children of Yale. For generations the snug little commonwealth had been the home of a tenacious conservatism, that clung to old ways and guarded the institutions of the fathers with pious zeal. In no other New England state did the ruling hierarchy maintain so glacial a grip on society. The Revolution of '76 had only ruffled the surface of Connecticut life; it left the social structure quite unchanged. The church retained its unquestioned control of the machinery of the commonwealth; and the church was dominated by a clerical aristocracy, hand in glove with a mercantile aristocracy."

"We Americans are a simple and somewhat primitive people. We desire things eagerly like children; and when we are crossed or thwarted, when we encounter those who dissent from our proposals, we strike out assertively. The state of Washington is characteristically American, with the virtues and shortcomings of the old stock set in sharp relief. In what temper our Economics and politics will dwell together in the immediate future, no wise man will endeavor to forecast."

"The temple is the concrete shape (mūrti) of the Essence; as such it is the residence and vesture of God. The masonry is the sheath (kośa) and body. The temple is the monument of manifestation."

"The "time" of Prajapati, or Prajapati’s Time, allowed itself to be laid out spatially in a work of architecture. The time of Shiva flowed into the movement of the limbs of Shiva, the lord of the dance. Works of sculpture and architecture demonstrate, each in its own form, the time of which they are the symbols. The building of the Vedic altar, by the accompanying words of the sacred rite of architecture, is self-explanatory. Symbolically, time—the time of the seasons—was built into the altar. The form of the altar comprised time, conceived, as it were, in terms of space."

"Although the enthroned figure with its large head and sex organ defies identification, it is like figures shown—the other unidentified—in a yoga posture. On either side of the enthroned yogi and above his arms, a tiger and an elephant are on his right, a rhinoceros and buffalo on his left, and two antelopes are below, that is, in front of his throne. The composition of this steatite relief is hieratic. The horn-crowned and enthroned yogi forms an isosceles triangle whose axis connects the middle of the bifurcating horns, the long nose, and the erect phallus of the deity."

"It is one thing to commit crimes against property, and a vastly different thing to commit crimes in behalf of property. Such is the edict of a system inspired by the sway of property."

"Today young people and adults in both Europe and the United States shuffle from day to day and year to year imprisoned in roles assigned to them by families, friends, and employers. But who am I really? What is my true self? The Danish nuclear physicist Niels Bohr once wrote, “I go into the Upanishads to ask questions,” and the Upanishads, the midwife birthing early Hinduism out of Vedic religion, ask these questions with even more urgency than Don Quixote or Holden Caulfield. Often ignoring and sometimes attacking the ritual obsessions of the Vedas, Hinduism’s homeless sages preoccupied themselves with philosophy instead."

"The metaphor of the melting pot is unfortunate and misleading. A more accurate analogy would be a salad bowl, for, though the salad is an entity, the lettuce can still be distinguished from the chicory, the tomatoes from the cabbage."

"Ah, how fortunate are those who have never learned the awful truth taught by hunger: that a man will do anything, to live one single day more!"

"Would that there were an award for people who come to understand the concept of enough. Good enough. Successful enough. Thin enough. Rich enough. Socially responsible enough. When you have self-respect, you have enough; and when you have enough, you have self-respect."

"I have never known why women believe the things men tell them – or vice versa."

"Ah, mastery ... what a profoundly satisfying feeling when one finally gets on top of a new set of skills ... and then sees the light under the new door those skills can open, even as another door is closing."

"Creativity could be described as letting go of certainties."

"The perceptions of middle age have their own luminosity."

"“I am prepared for anything,” he said. I shook my head at his fatal arrogance. How can a man be prepared for anything?"

"So what do people see when they read that well-behaved women rarely make history? Do they imagine good-time girls in stiletto heels or do-good girls carrying clipboards and passing petitions? Do they envision an out-of-control hobbyist or a single mother taking down a drunk in a bar? I suspect that it depends on where they stand themselves."

"Well-behaved women seldom make history."

"Some history-making is intentional; much of it is accidental. People make history when they scale a mountain, ignite a bomb, or refuse to move to the back of the bus. But they also make history by keeping diaries, writing letters, or embroidering initials on linen sheets. History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible. People make history by passing on gossip, saving old records, and by naming rivers, mountains, and children. Some people leave only their bones, though bones too make history when someone notices."

"If women had wives to keep house for them, to stay home with vomiting children, to get the car fixed, fight with the painters, run to the supermarket, reconcile the bank statements, listen to everyone’s problems, cater the dinner parties, and nourish the spirit each night, just imagine the possibilities for expansion — the number of books that would be written, companies started, professorships filled, political offices that would be held, by women."

"An androgynous mind was not a male mind. It was a mind attuned to the full range of human experience, including the invisible lives of women."

"Confession might be good for the soul, but if incautiously made public might be death to the body."

"Well-known among scholars is Ong’s call to reflect on how deep the transformations of societies transitioning from orality to scripture are. Less noticed was his remark that the transition carries ethical implications, particularly about conscience, the internal moral compass that guides human behavior."

"Denis Sinor (1999:396), a distinguished linguist and historian of Central Asia, takes a position that more might consider: “I find it impossible to attribute with any degree of certainty any given language to any given prehistoric civilization.”"

"Every good person deep down is an anarchist"

"If an empire, post-World War II America was the empire that dared not speak its name. But these days, on the part of friends and critics alike, the bashfulness has ended."

"Through the 1980s and early 1990s, the course of American health research was increasingly shaped by for two particular diseases, and . Even as national stakes rose, both in dollars spent and growing demands on the medical system, breast cancer and AIDS advocates made government policy-making for research ever more public and controversial. Through skillful cultivation of political strength, interest groups transformed individual health problems into collective demands, winning notable policy influence in federal agencies such as the (NIH) and (FDA). Activists directly challenged fundamental principles of both government and medical systems, fighting to affect distribution of research funds and questioning well-established scientific methods and professional values. In the contest for decision-making power, those players achieved remarkable success in influencing and infiltrating (some critics said, undermining) both the politics and science of medical research. Between 1990 and 1995, federal appropriations for breast cancer study rose from $90 million to $465 million, while in that same period, NIH AIDS research rose from $743.53 million to $1,338 billion."

"People who are always lamenting their lack of feeling are, for the most part, those who crave some vague sense of the turpitude of human wrong-doing in general. But John was the most personal of preachers. He pointed out the specific sins of his hearers. He listened to specific confessions. He gave specific exhortations. Repentance of a general sort is not worth the while. If you will regret your sins, drag out your own particular wrong-doing and look at it. Do not weep over Adam's fall, nor repent of the general depravity of man, but turn with loathing and regret from that which defiles your own life. If you are stingy, or greedy, or envious, or lustful, or smally selfish, or ill-tempered, or censorious, or lazy, remember that one tear over your specific sin is better than a thousand shed from a vague sense of general unworthiness."

"Engineering education in the United States has had a gendered history, one that until relatively recently prevented women from finding a place in the predominantly male technical world. For decades, Americans treated the professional study of technology as men's territory (Bix 2000b; Ogilvie 1986l Rossiter 1982, 1995). Until World War II and beyond, many leading engineering schools, including Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, and California Institute of Technology, remained closed to women. The few women admitted to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) struggled against a hostile intellectual and social environment. Women studying or working in engineering were popularly perceived as oddities at best, outcasts at worst, defying traditional gender norms. As late as the 1960s, women still made up less than 1 percent of students studying engineering in the United States, and critics either dismissed or ridiculed interest in the profession. Throughout the last half of the 20th century, activists fought to change that situation, to win acknowledgment of women's ability to become engineers."

"Jesus was the first great teacher of men who showed a genuine sympathy for childhood,—perhaps the only teacher of antiquity who cared for childhood as such. Plato treats of children and their games, but he treats them from the stand-point of a publicist. They are elements not to be left out in constructing society. Children, in Plato's eyes, are not to be neglected, because children will inevitably come to be men and women. But Jesus was the first who loved childhood for the sake of childhood. In the earlier stages of civilisation it is the main endeavour of men to get away from childhood. It represents immaturity of body and mind, ignorance and folly. The ancients esteemed it their first duty to put away childish things. It was Jesus who, seeking to bring about a new and higher development of character, perceived that there were elements in childhood to be preserved in the highest manhood; that a man must, indeed, set back again toward the innocence and simplicity of childhood if he would be truly a man. Until Jesus Christ, the world had no place for childhood in its thoughts. When He said, "Of such is the kingdom of Heaven," it was a revelation."

"Journalism is organized gossip."

"Christ's example is opposed, not to temperance, but to asceticism. Even the example of Jesus Christ must be followed in the light of common sense. What He might do in one age or nation we may find perilous in a different state of society. It is our bounden duty to abstain from that which causeth our brother to offend, whether it be meat or wine. But let us always distrust those who twist the plain language of Scripture in an endeavour to prove that what Christ drank was not wine."

"During the colonial era of American life, "" offered young girls elementary literacy, while s taught wealthier girls to raise their matrimonial prospects by becoming proficient in attractive arts, including , and , music, dancing, and . But by the Revolutionary and early national periods, influential figures such as , Abigail Adams, and Benjamin Rush argued for extending young women's education beyond such "ornamental" skills as a political and social asset to the country."

"Amy Bix's fine book, carefully researched and gracefully written, surveys the extent of everyday hardship during the . She concentrates on the debates over in the United States, debates that were "entwined with particular musings about the meaning of American history, the western frontier, and a sense of national destiny" (p. 8). She convincingly describes the lives and emotions of employed and unemployed Americans. She also summarizes some of the social research conducted during the depression years."

"I studied mind-cure, or metaphysical healing, which strikes at the root of disease; I went into hypnotism, mesmerism, and phrenomagnetism, and the od force—I don't suppose you know about the od which Reichenbach discovered."

"It appears to be hieroglyphic or ideographic in form. Human, animal and floral figurines are readily recognizable, multiple dashes probably represent numbers , while such objects as wheels, bows and arrows , and trees very likely represent themselves - it would seem that they are not phonetic symbols."

"We should join to them Mundigak in South Afghanistan, about whose pottery Fairservis, Jr., has the general statement: " ...the Mundigak sequence is closely paralleled in northern Baluchistan - so much so, in fact, that one can say that they are essentially of one and the same tradition.""

"The succeeding phase of Mundigak I, says Fairservis, adds to the KGM ware " the jars and cups and design repertoire, including black and red polychrome painting familiar in Quetta [central Baluchistan] as the Kechi Beg wares, and which in turn have their equivalents in the early Hissar Culture of north-eastern Iran. ""

"Walter Fairservis, Jr .,' describing the Harappan site of Mohenjo-daro, has dwelt on a structure "known to the excavators as the Assembly Hall". He 2 writes: "Badly preserved, it is nonetheless one of the most striking monuments at Mohenjodaro. It consisted of a broad pillared hall opening principally to . the north, i.e., towards the highest part of the site. Twenty rectangular pillars approximately five feet by three feet in size supported the roof. The pillars were arranged in rows of four with five pillars to each row." After detailing the rest of the important features of the building complex containing the pillared hall , Fairservis ' comments on this complex: " One cannot help but speculate.. . that it was constructed in response to a formality urged by religion or government. Was it indeed a place of assembly or perhaps a place of audience? Wheeler rightfully refers to the Achaemenid pillared hall of audience, the apadana, in this context, and such a comparison is certainly called to mind."

"Shrews are tamed only by silence."

"Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure."